exoverhaulfandomcom-20200214-history
Combat Overhaul: FTL Rework
FTL have been reworked in a way that offers a better and more interesting balance. FTL Drive Techs Wormhole FTL Wormhole base values and progression are kept at vanilla but the building cost and upkeep of wormhole stations has been dramatically reduced from 70 minerals to 10, and from 0.3 energy to 0.1. This is meant to make the AI better. To compensate for this change, the wormhole drive placeholder used in vanilla (which does nothing and has a cost / power requirement of 0), was replaced with actual wormhole drives called "Wormhole Modulator I-III", which have mineral cost and power requirement balanced against the other FTL drive techs. Now, to make this drive actually worthwhile (Wormhole range/speed are bizarrely an empire wide bonus in vanilla, rather than tied to a ship component) a new mechanic was introduced: once a ship travels to a system using wormhole exits the wormhole, it is immediately debuffed with -20% shields. For tier 1 Wormhole Modulators this debuff lasts for 90 days, for t2 it lasts for 60 days and for t3 it lasts for 30 days. Hyperdrive In vanilla hypderdrives are characterized by their windup, that is, they take time to charge before opening a hyperlane. This was removed and thus ships/fleets equipped with HD can enter hyperspace immediately upon reaching their jump point in system. At the same time a small amount of winddown was introduced. Therefore, after traveling using HD, a ship or fleet must wait for the cooldown period to finish before traveling again, either using FTL or regular thrusters in system. Warp Warp is not restricted like the other two methods, yet the vanilla balance in which warp equipped ships suffer significant winddown (i.e. cooldown) which scales with the range they travel is both annoying and tactically debilitating. Thus Warp was rebalanced in the following way: # The total amount of windup/winddown was reduced (from a factor of 9 to a factor of 6), and instead the warp interstellar speed was reduced from 0.35 to 0.15. Thus, warp ships spend less time winding up/down, but travel slower between system. # The windup/winddown was exchanged, thus warp equipped ships/fleets take a significant amount of time entering warp (i.e. charging their drives/plotting their course etc.), and a substantially smaller amount of time winding down. # The base range of warp was reduced from 50 to 40, but t2/t3 warp drives have both better range (+50%/+100%) and interstellar speed (+50%/+100%). Jump Drives In vanilla jump drives are significantly better than the other FTL techs, yet they are highly imbalanced because of the rarity of the technology, which strongly favors players who take down the Dimensional Horror - which of course gives the Jump Drive tech. This was changed in the mod, the Dimensional Horror no longer gives Jump Drives (read the entry regarding leviathans), and at the same time Jump Drives are a bit more common. At the same time another tier of Jump Drives has been introduced with better range and less cooldown and warmup. Thus drives in general have been balanced to have 5 regular tiers - t1-3 being either warp/hyperdrive/wormhole, t4-5 being jump drive 1/2. The t6 drive is the psi-jump drive, which remain the best FTL drive in the game. Other Important Changes Two important changes that should be noted: # the vanilla penalties to FTL travel outside one's territory have been completely reduced. These make no sense conceptually, and are very annoying strategically. # 2 very rare late game techs have been added, which boost the performance of every FTL travel.